A plan is in the works which, if funded, would bring uninterrupted high-speed internet to the homes of all students, faculty and staff of the Greene County School District, free of charge for five years.
Director of Technology Keith Ellenberg said the federal government’s Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF) has $7.6 billion dedicated to providing broadband internet and related services to schools and libraries. He talked about the proposal at the April 21 Greene County Board of Education meeting.
The school district has submitted proposals for six projects worth over $10.3 million that include money for improved Wi-Fi for school buses, new Chromebooks and hot spots for students.
The largest project request is for $9.4 million to build a countywide LTE broadband network that would assure that every school student, staff or faculty member could connect from home.
During the past two years of the COVID pandemic, students have frequently been required to take classes via remote learning. The school district provided computer hot spots that allowed them to access the internet through Verizon Wireless.
“The problem with the hot spots we got from Verizon is there’s no predictability on what kind of bandwidth you’re going to get,” Ellenberg told the board. “We sent hot spots home to some children that could not connect because they were not line of sight or in the radial signal to the tower. Second of all, even when they got connected, sometimes they couldn’t download and play videos because of the speed of the Verizon network. This proposal is going to eliminate that.”
If approved by the ECF and the Greene County Board of Education, the money would be used to run roughly 100 miles of cable and build 12 190-foot towers throughout the county, Ellenberg said.
The buildout costs would be paid for by the ECF. The school system would own the lines and towers and manage service which, initially, would not be available to the public.
“There is no one carrier in Greene County that’s willing to do countywide coverage,” Ellenberg said.
“They’re not going to put the infrastructure in place to carry dedicated student traffic and they’re not going to guarantee that we have dedicated bandwidth.”
There’s another pot of money from both the state and federal governments designed to bring broadband to unserved and underserved areas. The Greene County Commission has been working to cover the rural areas of the county, but no specific proposals have been made public.
This money from ECF is set aside exclusively for schools and libraries. Ellenberg says if the proposal is approved, the school system can then consider working with other entities in the county.
Also, at the BOE meeting:
• It was announced that Greene County High School was one of 239 schools in Georgia to be named as an AP (Advanced Placement) Honor School by the Georgia Department of Education. As an Expansion School, GCHS had a 25 percent growth in AP student participation from May 2020 to May 2021 and a minimum of 25 students testing in May 2020.
• The BOE voted to use $137,792 from the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to cover the costs of Salary Supplemental and FICA payments that resulted following the Governor’s salary increases this year.
• The Board approved a long list of legislative positions drafted by the Georgia School Boards Association which included positions on public school choice, improving teacher preparation and state funding of transportation costs for all students.